Page 31 of Sweet Surrender
“Why would she lie?”
“Worried about what her mother and Jon would say. She knows they won’t approve.”
“Yeah, and she lives for their approval.”
“Right. Her mom thinks that I’m too old for her and?—”
“I mean, there is a significant age gap there. What could you two possibly have in common?”
“We have a lot more than you two did. The only thing that matters is that I’m making her happy, Issachar. I ain’t got shit to prove to nobody. I just wanted to give you the respect of letting you know. I would have told you before now, but I wanted to make sure that she and I were on the same page before I moved forward. Listen, we both want this, and I promise you that I’mnot about to let anything or anyone get in our way. I don’t give a damn . . . mama, daddy, sister, brother, best friend, uncle or who the fuck ever.”
He balled up his sandwich wrap and aimed for the trash can and shot it in. “Three pointer and the crowd goes wild!” Issachar made cheering noises before he turned back to me and my grim expression.
“I knew something was up when we were at Jon’s wedding vacation. The way the two of you spent so much time together and how she was laughing at everything you said. I mean, when did this start?”
“At your wedding.”
“For real?”
I nodded. “That was some fucked up shit you two did asking that girl to plan your wedding. To Princess’s credit, she didn’t know at first, but once she did, she should have rescinded the request. You should’ve put your foot down when you heard about it.”
“You’ve told me that a million times, and while I agreed, I told you that Princess was determined to have Alex because she’s the best. She’s not insecure and shit.”
“She’s not, but you are. You need to fix that shit before you ruin your marriage. It wasn’t cool how you broke Alex down because you couldn’t measure up.”
“You sure you weren’t fucking around with Alex before now?”
I rested my elbows on my desk and leaned forward. “Fix your fucking mouth, Zack, before I fix it for you.”
He shrugged and extended his arms out in front of him. “I mean, you’re the one who’s messing with my ex. She was feeling you long before I broke up with her.”
“Watch what the fuck you say,” I warned again. “I ain’t gon’ say it too many more times. You know I’m not that guy.”
He sighed and replied, “A’ight, but she did used to admire you and talk about you a lot in the past.”
“And you felt some type of way about it?”
“Hell yeah. How would you feel if your girl was always going on about some other nigga?”
“I wasn’t even around when you two finally got together, except for a few visits home for the holidays.”
“I know that, but she would talk about how you were when we were all growing up and the times that she had seen you on those visits.”
“I mean, yeah, I’d feel a way, but I would also shut that shit down. I won’t have my woman sitting in my face disrespecting me with another nigga. I gotta ask you, Zack, what kind of shit was she saying? Because the Alex I know ain’t foul.”
“Just talking about your business and how it was booming and you were out in the world making big moves. She would talk about how you were toward Jessica, and she loved your marriage and the way you treated Jessica. Shit like that.”
“You ever thought maybe she was trying to inspire you to do certain things for her, or to take the reins of your relationship?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just didn’t like that shit.”
“Did that have anything to do with you breaking up with her?”
“Some. I felt like she was clueless to how she was making me feel, and she didn’t give a shit. She kept running that shit in the ground. Anytime you accomplished something new or we saw something in the business journals about the latest project you had won, she would go on about it for days.”
“You said that was some of it. What was the rest?”
“I had met Princess already. She was a contractor for my firm, and we were paired on a project. She was always going on about how smart I was and how impressed she was with thework I did. We had a few late nights, did some out-of-town trips together, and one thing led to another.”
